The present invention relates to cut-up machines and more particularly to a unique poultry wing cutter or splitter machine.
Various machines have been developed for automatically cutting up an eviscerated poultry carcass into its various component parts. These machines have become more prevalent as a result of the expansion of the fast-food restaurant business. The machines have replaced manual cut-up operations in many processing lines due to their labor savings, increased yield and/or increased rates of production.
Cut-up machines have been manufactured which cut up the whole poultry carcass into its normal commercial pieces on an automatic and sequential basis. An example of one such machine may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,624 entitled POULTRY CUT-UP MACHINE and issued on Apr. 12, 1977 to Eugene Martin and Harold Martin. The machine shown in this patent includes a conveyor for sequentially moving a poultry carcass through a plurality of cut-up stations. The machine automatically removes the wing tips, the intermediate sections from the wing stubs, the wing stubs from the back, the whole breast from the vertebrae and the thighs and legs from the vertebrae.
In many operations, the poultry carcass is separated or broken into a front half or saddle and a rear half or saddle. The front saddle includes the breast, a portion of the back and the wings. The rear half or saddle includes a back portion, the thighs and legs. The rear saddle may be transferred to a poultry leg and processing machine which separates the legs and thighs from the back. An example of one such machine may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,385,421 entitled POULTRY LEG/BACK PROCESSOR and issued on May 31, 1983 to Eugene Martin.
In a typical operation, the front saddle, including the breast, a portion of the back vertebrae and the wings, would be fed into a breast processor of the type illustrated in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 06/364,604 entitled AUTOMATIC POULTRY BREAST PROCESSING MACHINE AND METHOD, filed on Apr. 1, 1982 in the name of Eugene G. Martin and now U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,608. The machine of such application includes an indexed, stepped or sequential conveyor. The conveyor supports a plurality of spaced, tandemly arranged transport spikes or carcass supports. The poultry carcass sections are supported on the spikes. Elongated guide rods extend along the conveyor to engage the wing portions. The breast processing machine severs the wings and splits the breast longitudinally.
A need exists for an improved wing cutting or severing machine which is readily added to an existing processing machine, such as a breast processor, to perform initial wing cutting and thereby increase production rates, yields and/or accuracy of the cut-up operations.